C. BERTRAND SCHULTZ

1908-1995

Charles Bertrand Schultz was born June 17, 1908 in Red Cloud, Nebraska. He graduated from high school in 1926 followed almost immediately by undergraduate work at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, earning a Bachelor of Science Degree. He then turned his attention to graduate work at the same university earning both a Masters of Science Degree and a Ph.D.

In 1938, following receipt of his Ph.D, Schultz was appointed a member of the faculty at the University of Nebraska. During his tenure he served as Director of the University of Nebraska State Museum, taught in the Department of Geology and in 1967 was named Regents Foundation Professor of Geology. Dr. Schultz also represented the University in a cooperative paleontologic and geologic research project with the Frick Laboratory of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. His career spaned many decades, in the process becoming a recognized world-wide authority in the fields of Paleontology, Geology, Water Resources, Ecology and Early Man with heavy emphasis on the changing world environment and the migrations and extinction of animals and plants.

In 1931 Schulz married Marian Othmer, an anthropology major, she becoming an integral part of her husband's career and research partner. Over the years he and his wife studied in over 60 different countries and published over 200 scientific articles and monographs.

Throughout their lifetimes Dr. and Mrs. Schultz have endowed generously to the Nebraska Academy of Science enabling the Academy to purchase and conserve remaining untouched portions of native mixed grass prairie, to establish a research arboretum at their home estate in Lincoln and to establish annual scholarships. Among the many societies and organizations in which Dr. Schultz was an active member are Kiwanis, Theta Xi, Interfraternity Council, Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial, Friends of Loren Eiseley, Geological Society of America, Paleontological Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Sigma Xi.

In an interesting twist to his illustrious career, Schultz became associated, at least peripherally, with the incident at Roswell wherein an object of unknown origin and thought by many to have been extra-terrestrial in nature, was said to have crashed in July of 1947. The association came about because, six months after the alledged crash and unrelated to it, Schultz, was invited to give a presentation at the 46th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association conference held December 28-31, 1947, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Attending the conference was a fellow science colleague and long time friend William Curry Holden. Holden, as it would come out much later in time, would be tagged as one of two archaeologists related to the incident.[1] At the conference Schultz told Holden that a few months before, on the 4th of July weekend of that year (1947), he tried to meet up with him as described in the quote below:

"(Schultz) had been told that Holden was going to be participating in field work over the long weekend west of Roswell and since he was on his way TO Nebraska and had the time, thought he would go through Ruidoso to see what Holden was up to. There he was told Holden had taken a group of students on a field study near Roswell. Unable to find him he continued on to a site called the Arrowhead Ruin, an Indian pueblo dating from circa 1370 to 1450 located south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, between Glorietta and Pecos, then being worked by another colleague, William Pearce. Along the way he observed a series of military cordons blocking all the side roads on the western side of the highway as he headed north out of Roswell. However, since his eventual destination was Nebraska, he wasn't excessively over concerned about roads being blocked toward the west one way or the other. At the most, even though it just happened that weekend, not knowing anything about the Roswell Incident at the time, he attributed the military presence to no more than an exercise of some type."(source)

According to Roswell Incident: Updated and other similar well researched sources such as ROSWELL ARCHAEOLOGISTS: The Dirt Before The Dig or any attributed to or done by UFO investigator and researcher Thomas J. Carey, on that very same weekend, and the reason Holden wasn't where he was supposed to be when Schultz went looking for him, was because he and his students saw what they thought was a plane crash and went searching for it. As Holden related it to Schultz and later in interviews with the researchers, on Saturday, July 5, 1947, he and some students who were working sites and looking for signs of pre-Contact Indian occupation in the mountains west of Roswell over the long 4th of July weekend and stumbled across the second of the infamous Roswell impact sites after observing what they thought was a plane go down the night before. It has been said they were the ones who first reported to law enforcement officials what they thought was the crash of an aircraft. Military personnel were already on the scene and cordoned off most of the formal access to the site when Holden and his students unexpectantly hiked through the mountains on foot. He and his students were immediately escorted out of the area, being taken back the same way they came in.[2]

Over the years a number of people have come forward saying roads all over the general Roswell area had been blocked or cordoned off by the military, with Schultz being probably the most esteemed. Kevin Randle, PhD, in his book titled The Roswell Encyclopedia (2000) on page 220 writes that Schultz shared the story with his two daughters Tranda and Donna (i.e., now Tranda Fischelis and Donna Wilcox) as they were growing up in the 50s and 60s. It was Schultz's initial comments that brought Holden into the public eye regarding Roswell. Holden never really discussed the incident and it was well into his later years before he was actually even inteviewed on the subject.

What Schultz shared with his two daughters has never surfaced at the public level. There was, however, a first-hand witness to the Schultz-Holden conversation that confirmed Holden's story well before Holden was on his death bed. The bio-searcher that assisted famed astronomer and meteorite hunter Dr. Lincoln La Paz figure out the object's trajectory by studying the burnt and wilted plants along it's suspected path was at the same conference. He was attending in hopes of hearing his friend Ruth F. Kirk present Aspects of Peyotism Among the Navajo. In that he and Holden knew each other and had participated in Roswell events, he became privy to the content of the conversation between Holden and Schultz.

There is one real interesting twist to the cordons and armed military personnel associated with the Roswell debris field and it has to do with a man by the name of Frank Edwards. Edwards was a radio broadcaster and one of the earliest UFO buffs. He was an invited speaker before a UFO group in New York City in 1956, long before any reports of cordons or military blockades related to Roswell came up. There were typed transcripts of his presentation as well as his answers in a question answer session following his speech. The little known transcripts record his answer to a question from an audience member that asked him if he knew of any of the flying objects having crashed. His response was:

"I'm not too sure some of them haven't. Way back in 1947, at Roswell, New Mexico, a farmer reported he saw something strike a mountainside and crash. According to what I was told, they threw troops in a circle all around that place, and would let nobody in for five days."

So, here's Edwards, in 1956, years before anything came up with Holden and Schultz --- or anybody else for that fact --- about cordons, saying that they threw troops in a circle all around the place for five days. Where or how he got his information or what his source was is not known --- like he says in his quote above, "According to what I was told..." So, who did the telling?

William Curry Holden's daughter Jane Holden Kelley is on record as saying that at the time interviews were being conducted, because of his age, her father was easily confused. Memories from his life were jumbled and reordered, and, even though she and her dad were close, he had never mentioned anything to her about the incident. It should be mentioned almost the exact same information was passed onto Schultz at he 1947 conference and many, many years before the deathbed interviews.